Recent History

by Anthony Giardina

I was very moved by Luca's experience of trying to come to grips with his father's homosexuality. This is a painfully honest look at the impact on a young adolescent and the effect of the emotional consequences on his own relationships. Sensitively written, beautiful and haunting.

Extract

Bob Painter's effect on my father was a little startling to watch. He made this neat, taciturn man, who was always telling other people to temper their effusions, himself effusive, wanting to show off. My mother and I were both very quiet at the beginning. We were watching a man we thought we knew behave as we had never seen him before. He showed Bob Painter around our house, and pointing things out, laughed at things that didn't seem funny. He laughed in a high and irritating way, and there were times, doing that, when he seemed to be dismissing us, and our whole lives, for the benefit of a stranger.